#bladesinthedark

[onemorestepinduskvol]

Heartbeat Scale

Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.

It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.

Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.

I call this the Narrative Scale.

Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.

Let's call this the Action scale.

That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.

But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.

Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.

I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.

It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.

It's the very moment that matters most.

Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.

It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.

And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.

Scaling in and scaling out helps add a tempo and contextualise the narrative arc of a score and its surrounds in a way that can feel quite visceral and taut and bitter.

[raul-volp2]

Pixels in the Dark is a personal project I am making for my favorite tabletop rpg Blades in the Dark, and it's right now an assets pack of characters and factions to be used printed and with digital apps. The project is moving very slow since it's a project with no profit in mind but some ambitious goals, after the charactrs and factions done I would like to expand to making maps, character and crew sheets and if possible (and John allows it) I would even wanted to add a small hack/sourcebook adding tactical rules for it, this is the most ambitious and probably not possible goal, but I believe the characters, maps, sheets and tokens will be done someday. I dont have a date for it, so it might never release it, but it's a fun project to work.

[chpockpupok]

МАСТУРБАЦИЯ and just my and @tellars characters

[cryngeisdead]

Time stops for no man...

[acegiak]

So, City Of Red Waters is out. It's an alternate setting supplement for Blades In The Dark inspired by the bloody colonial histories of Australia and North America rich with conflict and oppression and also opportunity. Is your crew happy to rise to the top of polite society, beneficiaries of the machinery of empire, as Emcees? Will your crew turn the wheels, cursed guardians of the secrets of the true costs of decadence, as Roots? Or will you take on the heavy mantle of rage that weighs you down and drives you forward, as the River Of Blood, ready to burn it all down?

If you want to douse your next game of Blades In The Dark in colonial horror and rebellion, I hope you'll check it out?

Drive-thru rpg:

Evilhat:

[davidbru]

Streets of Gotham SEASON 2 starts streaming tomorrow night! 8PM ET on @manapotstudios We’ve got old faces returning & new ones joining. Tune in to see how the crew is adapting to life back in Gotham after their Arkham Asylum breakout, as we continue our Gotham City @bladesinthedarkita game . . . #streetsofgotham #gothamcity #ttrpg #roleplay #actualplay #stream #twitch #batman #fanfic #bladesinthedark #bitd #tabletop #dice # (at Gotham City) https://www.instagram.com/p/CokNQCROfeV/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hiscursedness]

BAD ACTORS, our Blades in the Dark adventure

The URGE to name this one "The Mariner's Revenge Story" was very strong, very strong indeed. Come watch and find out why!

[the-one-real-katyees]

I love those flashbacks!

A player wants to do some manipulation, but hasn't the stats for it? You can narrate how you taught them lying 101 in a flashback before the thing started.

Then your player can roll with your help and might turn the tide! (don't forget to pay stress)

A little bit like ocean's eleven style, where they show what acutally happened, even though the audience saw the enemy's side of things

If you unadvance the plot to before the even game started... uh... w-what happens then?

Well, some games already take strictly non-chronological time into account! If you're playing Blades in the Dark then it's technically possible for anyone to narrate at some point a flashback to events before the campaign began. So in that case you simply keep on playing. But in less advanced games without such mechanics it causes an underflow error and you win the game and can never play it again.

[writersstareoutwindows]

y'all have seen how insufferable I am about Picket bladesinthedark who had naught but a single half-hour of screentime across two episodes total.

I do not think the world can even begin to conceive of the creature I will become if Katie Pearlhead née Delacour, Queen of Thieves, spurned bride, two-bit upstart from Tanner's Folly with nothing to her name but a paper mache pearl and highly breakable ambitions, doesn't get a resolution.

[toplesstopics]

Today's #Twitch #livestream is very exciting--My friend Ash is running a one-shot #TTRPG for me in a new system under development: #Switchblades, based on #BladesInTheDark ! Streaming NOW at https://www.twitch.tv/cerigotgame

[stjepanlukac]

With the new season of "Haunted City" (an actual play of Blades in the Dark) airing this week, I wanted to try my hand at one of my favorite characters from the stream, Juliette Bellerose aka. "The Widow", as portrayed by the amazing Josephine McAdam.

[elvishprincess25]

practicing some more rough doodles today: did one of my Orc fighter Y'xhara and one of my new Blades in the dark Oc Nives; achieved a less scarier version of her XD

[raul-volp2]

PLay Blades in the Dark with maps and my pixel minis is really fun, I have an idea for a hack to turn Blades in a tactical game, plan to work on it for fun. :)

[rerollwoodwork]

Finally figured out how to properly use the wood burner. I quote like the results here. Made as a custom commission for someone at the school #woodworking #rpg #craft #goth #necromancer #dicebox #dicegoblin #dicetray #vtm #vampirethemasquerade #dungeonsanddragons #pathfinder #bladesinthedark #monsteroftheweek #rolltest #recycledmaterials♻️ #palletproject #eldersymbol #callofcthulhu #cthulhu (at The University of Texas at Arlington) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWrJv4PFX-G/?utm_medium=tumblr

[cryngeisdead]

Devin Aldaire! An awful little dandy assassin for a friend's blades game! He recently turned 40 and he's *very sensitive* about it. He spends his off-hours buying new clothes on his sugar parent's dime. A terrible person who's terribly fun to play. :P

[lucgrigg-blog]

Compilation of the recent digital work... Three of these are characters from my current #BladesintheDark game. There's a #SpikeSpiegel, a #MichaelWraith, two #selfportraits, and couple random #sketches. . #digitalart #digitalpainting #fanart #cowboybebop #stargateatlantis #photoshopart #clipstudiopaint #sketchdump (at Somerset, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTFyvyqrfWl/?utm_medium=tumblr